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IJLVSSES S. GRANT 



RANK IT, JONES 








»«E(*K«nriaw m 



AN ADDRESS 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BY 

FRANK H. JONES 

BEFORE 

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

AT THE 

CELEBRATION OF THE 

100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

BIRTH OF 

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT 



THURSDAY, APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 
NINETEEN TWENTY-TWO 



for her fine qualities of heart and mind, and espe- 
cially for her tender devotion to the memory of her 
hero husband. 

Pericles, when he was to speak in public, prayed 
to the Gods "That not a word might escape him 
unawares unsuitable to the occasion." Since accept- 
ing your invitation my prayers have gone further, — 
that I might say much suitable to the occasion, and 
anticipating the plan of the Society might be realized 
by the presence of a number of young men of 
Chicago, I hoped I might from the many noble acts 
and many noble qualities of heart and mind of 
Ulysses S. Grant, present to them a guide for 
imitation in pure thought, right living and high 
motives. Plutarch says, "I fill my mind with the 
sublime images of the best and greatest men by 
attention to history and biography and if I contract 
any blemish, any ill custom or ungenerous feeling 
from other company in which I am unavoidably 
engaged, I correct and expel them by calmly and 
dispassionately turning my thoughts to these 
excellent examples." 

I may trespass upon the time and patience of 
many of you in the recital of details, but for my pur- 
pose it seems necessary. In a number of my recitals 
of dates and facts especially with reference to his 
youth and young manhood, I shall use the "Memoirs 
of Ulysses S. Grant," to my mind one of the literary 
classics of all times, frequently using his own words. 
I shall hope to give a personal touch to my remarks 
by information given me by members of his family. 

Ulysses S. Grant, son of Jesse R. Grant and 
Hannah Simpson Grant, was born at Point Pleasant, 



[6] 



Clermont County, Ohio, on April 27, 1822. In 1823, 
he went with his parents to Georgetown, Ohio, where 
he resided until 1839, when he went to the Military 
Academy at West Point, New York, at the age of 
seventeen. His father was a tanner "in comfortable 
circumstances considering the times, his place of 
residence and the community in which he lived." 
The schools at Georgetown were very far from the 
educational opportunities the boys of today enjoy. 
There were no free schools, Public Schools such as 
we have today. They were schools supported by 
subscription "and a single teacher with from thirty 
to forty scholars, from the infant learning the A B C's 
up to the young lady of eighteen and boy of twenty, 
studying the highest branches there taught, 'Read- 
ing, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic.'" Such a school 
young Ulysses attended from the age of five to 
seventeen, and never missed a quarter from school, 
but this did not exempt him from manual labor. 
He detested the tanning trade, but was fond of 
agriculture and of all employment in which horses 
were used, and at seven or eight years of age he was 
hauling all the wood used in the house and the 
shops. 

Mrs. Jones has told me a story of his early fond- 
ness for horses. When he was two or three years 
old he would find his way to the stable alone, go 
into the stalls, walk about under the horses and 
between their legs. Some neighbors, hearing of this 
daily occurrence, went to his mother and protested 
against her allowing him to run the risk of being 
kicked or trampled upon. His mother listened to 
them patiently and unconcernedly and calmly 



[7] 



replied, "Horses seem to understand Ulysses." 
At the age of eleven he was strong enough to hold a 
plow and from that age until he was seventeen he 
did all the work done with horses, such as breaking 
up the land, furrowing, plowing corn and potatoes, 
bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all 
the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow 
or two, and sawing wood for the stoves, and all this 
time attending school. 

I am not painting an imaginary and exaggerated 
picture of toil and hardships for the boy, of fearless 
"wild West" courage, of impossible feats of daring and 
of more than human wisdom in the man to excite 
wonder and admiration. This is too frequently 
indulged in by biographical writers and to the 
harm of young readers. 

In 1839 Jesse R. Grant said to his son, "Ulysses, 
you are going to get the appointment." "What 
appointment?" asked the boy. The father replied, 
"To West Point. I have applied for it." "But I 
won't go," replied the son. The father said he 
thought he would and the General in his Memoirs 
says, "I thought so too." He really had no objection 
to going to West Point but his schooling had been 
limited and a Georgetown boy friend of his had 
failed there, and Ulysses believed he did not have 
the ability to pass the examinations and graduate. 
He could not bear the idea of failing. He did not 
want to fail in anything he undertook to do. And 
in addition to his anxiety over the examinations, 
he says a military life had no charms for him and he 
had no idea of staying in the Army even if he should 
graduate. 



[8] 



How apt here the saying "Man proposes, but 
God disposes." It seems to me that an all-wise 
Providence has had this country of ours in His 
special care and so guided the minds and hearts 
of our people as that in at least two great crises of 
our existence, when failure threatened, the right 
man for the hour has been chosen, — Washington, 
Lincoln, Grant. 

His distaste for a military life was so great that he 
anxiously hoped for the passage of the Bill before 
Congress in 1839 abolishing the Military Academy, 
or if it was not abolished, he hoped to be an assistant 
professor of mathematics in the Academy. He said 
in London when on his trip around the world, "I 
have never felt any sort of fondness for war and I 
have never advocated it except as a means for peace." 
And again, "War at all times, whether a civil war 
between sections of a common country or between 
nations, ought to be avoided if possible with honor." 

Young Grant was about to leave for West Point. 
The usual preparation had to be made, — the pur- 
chase of a trunk, the marking of the same with his 
initials. At the time of his birth he was named 
Hiram Ulysses Grant. He rebelled against arriving 
at West Point with the initials "H. U. G." on his 
trunk, and so having always been called Ulysses, 
he himself painted on his trunk the initials "U. 
S. G." adopting the initial "S" for his middle name, 
making his name Ulysses S. Grant, not Ulysses 
Simpson Grant as so often erroneously, Mrs. Jones 
tells me, printed. 

In the early stage of his last illness, Bishop New- 
man of the Methodist Church called to inquire 



after his condition. Mrs. Grant ushered him up 
to the bedroom where she and her children were 
watching the sleeping sufferer, and then and there 
at the request of Mrs. Grant, the General was 
christened Ulysses S. Grant, he having told Mrs. 
Grant he wished to be christened by that name. 

In 1843 after graduation from West Point, young 
Grant reported for duty at Jefferson Barracks, 
St. Louis, Missouri, and while there he visited at 
the home of his West Point room-mate, Frederick 
T. Dent, about five miles from St. Louis, and there 
met Dent's sister. Miss Julia Dent. The Dent home 
aroused great interest in young Grant, and on one of 
his visits there was an incident which brought out 
one of his greatest qualities and the one, I believe, 
more than any one of his many excellent qualities 
that brought him his great success as a soldier. 

He was on horseback and when he reached 
Gravois Creek, which he had to cross and which was 
usually so shallow as to be easily forded, indeed as 
a rule so shallow that the authorities had no bridge 
over it, he found the banks full and overflowing 
from very heavy rains. He was out for a call and 
had no extra clothes. There was a call on the other 
side of that angry looking stream stronger than his 
fear of that flood or of the drenching of his spick and 
span military uniform. So in he rode and finally 
and luckily reached the other side a bedraggled 
young army officer. He says in his Memoirs in 
reference to this ride, "One of my superstitions had 
always been, when I started to go anywhere or to do 
anything, not to turn back or stop until the thing 
intended was accomplished." I believe that out of 



[10] 



his great modesty, exemplified throughout his entire 
life, he miscalls this quality supersitition when the 
impulse was "force of character" to do the thing he 
starts out to do, the determination to accomplish 
what he starts out to accomplish. The motto of the 
Clan Grant is "Stand fast — stand sure." It was 
force of character that in the Wilderness inspired his 
famous message — "We will fight it out on this 
line if it takes all summer." It was that force of 
character that took him to Donelson, into Vicksburg 
and into Richmond and won for us what he started 
out to accomplish, — the restoration of the union 
of the States. It was that force of character, that 
determination which every boy must have and 
exercise, as he did in a clean, honorable way, to 
win success. 

But I have digressed and possibly left you anxious 
about his water soaked suit and his call. His friend 
Dent loaned him one of his suits, too large and ill 
fitting, and we can well imagine he cut a sorry 
figure, but he had started on this side with a fixed 
purpose and the young lady probably never noticed 
the ill fitting clothes, — she saw only the man, modest 
and forceful, and the citadel of her heart was stormed 
so successfully that Miss Julia Dent surrendered 
and terms were agreed upon. It was not an "uncon- 
ditional surrender" so often exacted by him in so 
many battles won by him in the Rebellion. There 
was a mutual agreement that on his return from the 
Mexican War, where he was then going, they 
would be married. 

At Monterey two American regiments in the midst 
of terrific fighting found their cartridge boxes nearly 



[11] 



empty. They could not turn back even if they would, 
for the open ground was swept by the enemy's 
fire and it was death to attempt it. The Commanding 
Officer wished to get a message back to the Division 
Commander or to General Taylor that he was 
nearly out of ammunition, and deeming the return 
dangerous, he did not like to order anyone to carry 
the message, so he called for a volunteer. Lieutenant 
Grant promptly volunteered his services. He exam- 
ined his saddle to be sure it was tight and firm, 
headed his horse to the rear, gave him the rein and 
spur, putting one leg over the horn of his saddle, 
he flung himself low to one side of the horse and with 
an arm over the horse's neck, through a shower of 
musketry bullets, he reached the cartridge wagons, 
and within an hour the brigade was resupplied with 
ammunition. General Charles King in his book 
"The True Ulysses S. Grant" says of him in Mexico, 
"There was no junior in the entire array who had 
acquitted himself with higher credit or had rendered 
more valiant or valuable services than the very 
modest and mild mannered young quartermaster 
of the Fourth Infantry." Frank Lee, Major com- 
manding the Fourth Infantry, said he had borne 
himself with "distinguished gallantry." 

Captain Grant left Mexico on lea,ve of absence and 
Captain Ulysses S. Grant and Miss Julia Dent were 
married at the Dent Home, August 22, 1848. After 
a brief honeymoon he was stationed at Sacketts 
Harbor, New York, and later on the Pacific Coast, 
and in 1854 resigned from the Army and returned 
to civil life, going to a farm of eighty acres owned 
by Mrs. Grant a short distance from St. Louis. 



12 



Then began a real struggle for the support of 
himself, wife and two children. He had no money 
with which to stock his farm and his appeals to his 
father for a loan of $500 for a year at ten per cent 
fell on deaf ears. He had no house to live in. He 
built a log house of two stories, cutting the logs, 
splitting the shingles and doing nearly all the work 
himself. He seemed to have a sense of humor with 
it all for he named the home " Hardscrabble " and 
surely it must have been a hard scrabble. 

He says in his Memoirs, "If nothing else could be 
done I would load a cord of wood on a wagon and 
take it to the city for sale." In a letter to his father 
he says, "This last year my place was not half 
tended because I had but one span of horses and one 
hand, and we had to do all the work of the place. 
For two years now I have been compelled to neglect 
my farm to go off and make a few dollars to buy 
any little necessities, sugar, coffee, etc., and to pay 
hired men. My expenses for my family have been 
nothing scarcely for the last two years. Fifty dollars 
I believe would pay all that I have laid out for their 
clothing." While at Hardscrabble his family in- 
creased to four children. 

Farming had not been a success, so in 1858 the farm 
was sold and the family moved to St. Louis where 
Captain Grant and a cousin of Mrs. Grant's opened 
a real estate office. This was not a success, and in 
1860 he and his family moved to Galena, Illinois, 
and he took a clerkship in his father's store, sup- 
porting himself and his family on a stipulated salary. 
Mrs. Jones tells me he supported himself, his wife 
and four children on $75 a month. 



[is: 



Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President 
March 4, 1861. Then came the secession of the 
Southern States, the firing on Fort Sumter, and the 
President's call for 75,000 troops. Very soon there- 
after he went to Springfield, Illinois, and offered 
his services as Colonel of a regiment. He could 
easily have been Captain of the Galena Company, 
but he very justly thought that from his army 
experience he could successfully command a reg- 
iment. In the early days of the War there were 
many with political influence and ambitious for 
political preferment who wanted to be Colonels. 
They thought it the popular thing to do, but the 
louder the cannons roared the less anxious some of 
them wanted to be Colonels. Captain Grant had 
no influence and repeatedly in his letters declared 
he would not ask for any, but would stand or fall 
on his merits. 

Captain Grant was appointed Colonel of the 21st 
Illinois. When he left Illinois he marched his reg- 
iment to Palmyra, Missouri. He says, "My sen- 
sations as we approached the what I supposed might 
be a 'field of battle' were anything but agreeable." 
But on arriving there he found the Confederate 
Colonel Harris had gone and Colonel Grant then 
concluded that Harris was as much afraid of him 
as he was of Harris, which was a view of the situation 
he never forgot and from that event to the close of 
the war he never experienced trepidation in con- 
fronting an enemy, though always with more or less 
anxiety. 

General Grant, during his military career, care- 
fully studied the characteristics — mental and moral 



14 



— of those in the Army with whom he was thrown. 
Especially so in Mexico where there were a number 
he was destined to meet again in the great Civil 
War — some on the Northern side and some on the 
Southern. And apparently he had so successfully 
studied them that he knew just about what each 
one would do in different military positions. He 
knew Flood and Pillow at Donelson, and governed 
his movements accordingly, and when General 
Buckner surrendered he said to General Grant, 
"You would not have gotten up to Donelson if I 
had been in command." General Grant replied, 
"If you had been in command I should not have 
tried it in the way I did." He knew Pemberton at 
Vicksburg, 

Lieutenant General Grant continued his victorious 
march "on to Richmond," confident of his plan of 
attack, fully advised of the position of the enemy 
and their movements. On September 5, 1864, in a 
letter to his father, eight months before Appomattox, 
he says, "Richmond will fall as Atlanta has done 
and the Rebellion will be suppressed." Richmond 
fell — General Lee surrendered and the Union of the 
States was restored. All sections of the country 
hailed Lieutenant General Grant as the one who had 
put down the Rebellion. Wherever he went it was a 
triumphal march. 

It is difficult to realize that this man, in 1860 a 
clerk in Galena at $75 a month, after the struggles, 
hardships, privations and failure of working an 
eighty acre farm, building his own log house with 
his own hands, cutting and hauling wood to the city 
to raise money for the support of his family of four. 



15 



expending on them not to exceed $50 in two years 
for clothing, should in 1865 from a Lieutenant in 
the Mexican War, rise to the heights of General of 
all the Armies of the North, the Conqueror of the 
Rebellion. 

I shall not discuss in detail the many battles he 
won, indeed I do not recall one he ever lost. I have 
not a military mind to do so and it is sufficient for 
me that President Lincoln said, "I cannot spare this 
man — he fights." 

Young men love to read about heroes, especially a 
soldier hero. They are fascinated by the recital 
of deeds of daring. They are thrilled by the march 
of soldiers as are all of us. I suppose every normal 
boy is naturally or by example pugnacious. If he 
reads Plutarch's Lives, and the biographies of all 
the great soldiers of ancient and modern times, — 
Alexander the Great, Caesar, Marlborough, Napo- 
leon and all the others, in my judgment the study 
of Ulysses S. Grant, from boyhood through man- 
hood, is the most instructive lesson, the best example 
for young men to imitate in his courage, his sense of 
justice, his purity, his magnanimity, his consider- 
ation for others, his modesty, and his absolute 
truthfulness and accuracy of statement, which I 
shall attempt to accentuate by historical incidents 
and by personal information from members of his 
family. 

His courage. Not the reckless, boastful, swash- 
buckler kind, but that quiet unheralded courage 
to meet the necessities of the case in the faithful 
discharge of his duty. In the war with Mexico the 
American troops were being harassed by Mexican 



16] 



cannon from the heights of Chapultepec, and 
Lieutenant Grant volunteered to ascend the steeps 
to quiet their guns and did so. His son Ulysses 
Junior (we call "Buck") asked his father if that was 
not courageous. The General replied, "Why a 
whole lot of soldiers volunteered to climb up with 
me. Courage is the commonest attribute of man." 
He was appointed Brevet Captain "for gallant 
conduct at Chapultepec." 

His sense of justice. He was such a modest man 
about his own deserts and yet so liberal in awards 
to others merits. When Admiral Farragut died, Mrs. 
Grant asked her husband whom would he appoint 
as successor. "Porter," the President replied. 
"After all the abusive articles Porter has been 
publishing about you?" "Well, Julia, Porter earned 
it and I am going to give it to him." The act was 
nearly the death of Porter who really took to his 
bed. After that General Grant was to Porter no 
less than Archangel, so square, right and true. 

In correcting an article he had written for the 
Century Magazine on the conduct of General A. 
McD. McCook at Shiloh, he said, "I am not 
willing to do anyone an injustice and if convinced 
that I have done one, I am always willing to make 
the fullest admission." 

His purity. A friend of General Grant's family 
and of mine told me that the only external indication 
of annoyance he ever noticed in him was a nervous 
opening and shutting of his fingers, an index of 
emotion often observed by other of his intimate 
friends. A notable illustration of this was told him 
by a gentleman who once accompanied him to a large 



[17] 



public dinner given in his honor. At the close one 
of the guests ventured upon the telling of stories, 
plain vulgar stories. The General's fingers began 
to work and he quietly excused himself, and his com- 
panion, knowing the significance of the gesture, 
followed him. The General turned to him and said, 
"I hope I have not taken you from the table, but I 
have never permitted such conversation in my 
presence and I never intend to." This was not an 
affectation. His mind — clean and wholesome — left 
its imprint on his face. 

He was never profane. Someone said to him, 
"General, I have never heard you swear," "No, I 
never do. I don't know how and would have to 
stop to think of the words." A silent, strong char- 
acter, earned, deserved and respected as in the 
following incident, proves more forceful than a long 
line of profanity. The General and his son Fred 
were seated on their horses upon a knoll that com- 
manded the field. A Confederate battery was raking 
the Federal position. The General ordered Logan, 
who was a gallant soldier and who never ordered his 
men to go where he would not lead them, to take the 
battery. Logan, as you may know, could not utter 
consecutive sentences without interlarding them with 
oaths and there was plenty of and repeated inter- 
larding on this occasion. Logan came galloping back 
and said, "General, I have ordered the blankety 
blank blank blank men to charge and they won't 
stir." Colonel Fred Grant said that even at this 
critical moment a smile passed over his father's 
face, hearing Logan's grotesque and picturesque 
profanity, and he said, "General, I will speak to 



[is: 



them." General Grant rode along the line and the 
men went off with a yell and took the battery. 

His magnanimity, but controlled by reason. 
Appomattox is the greatest instance of this. A 
man of only forty-three years of age, exercising such 
wisdom and foresight as is generally supposed only 
to come to those much older. This had been a war 
between two sections of the country. President 
Lincoln and General Grant were both fighting for 
the restoration of the Union. I do not know of any 
General — let me put it another way — I fear thei^e 
were some Generals who, if anyone of them had 
been in command at Richmond and Appomattox, 
would have been so lacking in poise, wisdom and 
foresight that restoration of the real union of the 
States would have been long deferred. 

His modesty. When during the Rebellion the 
star of General Grant was ascending rapidly and in 
illuminating brightness, the people began to call for 
information, and more information about this great 
soldier. They knew he won battles. They wanted 
to know something, everything about him of a more 
personal nature. A friend of his father wrote the 
General, asking him to furnish the material for his 
biography. With that same modesty which had 
marked his entire life, unchanged by his brilliant 
successes, he wrote the letter on the following page, 
the original of which is in the possession of Mrs. Jones. 

Mrs. Jones tells me that when he sent to his 
publishers manuscript for what would make about 
three hundred pages of his Memoirs, the publishers 
came to him protesting against his lack of the use of 
the letter "I". They said, "Why General, in the 



19 



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first three hundred pages of this book you have not 
used 'I' fifty times. It is 'we' did this, 'our army' 
did that, 'it was plannied' etc." The General's 
reply was, "They know I was there." I understand 
that at the earnest solicitation of the publishers he 
did make some changes to suit their views. 

Another characteristic which made for greatness 
in General Grant was that all he knew was ready at 
hand in his subjective mind. He never held a council 
of war. He knew without cogitation, without 
consultation, what he had to do with, what the enemy 
would do. This power of knowledge, this wealth of 
knowing the facts is best illustrated by an occur- 
rence at his home in 1882. 

The General was sitting with many members of 
his family around him, and reading a newspaper. He 
had the ability to read rapidly and accurately 
and remember all he read and yet answer any remark 
made to him. Mrs. Grant entered the room, remark- 
ing that the daughter of Colonel Whistler had 
called. "Ulyss, how old is she.'*" Without looking 
up and without the slightest hesitation General 
Grant replied, "Forty-nine next Thursday," and 
continued his reading. "Now, Ulyss, put that paper 
down and tell me why you say that. I know you 
have not been thinking of her." To this the General 
replied, "Well, Julia, we left Sacketts Harbor this 
month in 1851 and the night before we left we 
attended her coming out party on her eighteenth 
birthday. It was St. Patrick's Day. That occurred 
thirty-one years ago and she will be forty-nine next 
Thursday." 

General Grant was always unconscious of any 



[22] 



merit for doing his duty. He no doubt performed 
many noble, great, unselfish acts lost to history 
because he was unconscious of any personal merit in 
doing right. At a banquet in the City of Mexico a 
Mr. Lewis got the eye of the toastmaster and his 
consent to say something, and with great heat said, 
"General Grant rose to be the greatest man of his 
time and he never told a lie — the greatest General 
in all time and he never stole a cent. Those are 
truths you ought to know." In telling me this, his 
son Ulysses said to me, "Father was ashamed of 
Lewis for praising him for not telling a lie and for 
not being a thief." 

General Grant had one fine quality too seldom 
imitated. It so frequently happens that when a 
strong, forceful, determined man has developed his 
plan for some important work and is opposed in his 
judgment and plan, and his plan succeeds, he makes 
an opportunity to show to the world how he was 
right and how the one opposing was wrong. It is a 
little self glorification which General Grant never 
had and lack of kindly consideration which General 
Grant always had. General Grant submitted his 
Vicksburg plan of campaign to General Sherman, 
who in reply wrote him a long letter protesting 
against it as wrong in conception and impossible to 
execute. General Grant after reading the letter, 
showing it to no one, put it in a private drawer of 
his desk and after he captured Vicksburg on his plan 
General Sherman so severely criticized, he returned 
the letter to General Sherman without comment, 
and never did that letter have publicity until pub- 
lished in full by General Sherman in the Public Press. 



[23] 



His domestic life. General Grant had a devoted 
wife and family to whom he was devoted. He liked 
above all things to have with him at home and in 
travel his wife Julia, his daughter Nellie, and his 
sons, Fred, Ulysses and Jesse. They were the first 
friends in his heart and in his duty. In the summer 
of 1864 General Grant was drawing the net closer 
around Richmond and the army of General Lee. 
Watching every moment and with great care every 
movement of the enemy, ordering his various com- 
mands here and there to meet the changing situa- 
tions and to prevent the escape of Lee's Army, with 
continuous and terrific fighting and anxious for the 
care of the wounded men of both armies lying ex- 
posed and suffering between the lines and com- 
municating with General Lee for some agreed plan 
to care for the same, this unconquerable and gentle 
soldier wrote this letter: 



[24] 



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General Grant was always loyal and devoted to 
President Lincoln and earnestly in favor of his re- 
nomination and re-election. His son wrote me, "It 
is not generally known that General Grant was 
approached with an offer of candidacy for the 
Presidency in 1864 and that he refused it in favor 
of Mr. Lincoln so peremptorily that his family even 
never heard of it until I saw the proof lately." He 
did not tell me what the proof is, but in a letter of 
General Grant's to his father dated February 20, 
1864, there is an expression that looks like corro- 
boration of this. The General says, "I am not a 
candidate for any office. All I want is to be left alone 
to fight this War out, fight all rebel opposition and 
restore a happy Union in the shortest possible time. 
I know that nothing personal to myself could ever 
induce me to accept a political office." 

In response to the demand of his party in 1868 
and again in 1872 he was elected President of the 
United States. He came to the Presidency in tur- 
bulent times after the Rebellion and after President 
Johnson and during the Reconstruction Period. 
He had had no experience in political life and the 
clashing and quarrelling over political patronage 
was distasteful to him. When he began his Pres- 
idency, the country was in turmoil, but on the 
termination of his Presidency his appeal "Let us 
have peace" was realized. During his incumbency 
important and necessary measures were put into 
operation and our foreign affairs adjusted satis- 
factorily. 

On General Grant's return from abroad he entered 
into a business partnership with his son Ulysses, 



:29] 



and others. He invested every dollar he had in this 
firm. Through the dishonesty of one of his partners 
the firm failed and General Grant lost every dollar 
he had accumulated. A few months before the failure 
he slipped on the pavement and seriously injured his 
hip and thereafter was obliged to use a crutch or 
cane. 

He bore his financial and physical suffering without 
a murmur although his mental anguish must have 
been great, which no doubt depleted his physical 
powers of resistance. A friend of mine told me he 
chanced to be alone with the General in his room 
one night after this last cruel betrayal of his con- 
fidence. The General, walking to and fro by the 
aid of his crutch, suddenly stopped, and as if 
following aloud the train of his silent thought, said: 
"I have made it a rule of my life to believe in a 
man long after others have given him up. I do not 
see how I can do so again." 

At sixty-two years of age he is obliged to make a 
new start in life to provide for the support of himself 
and wife. In 1884 he began to have trouble with 
his throat and suffered some pain. A specialist was 
consulted and it was decided that the disease was 
cancerous in tendency. His suffering was extreme, 
but always he bore it patiently and without a mur- 
mur. 

His son Ulysses told me of an incident during his 
father's illness, intimate, pathetic, heroic, which I 
think a sympathetic people devoted to the memory 
of General Grant should know and that again they 
may realize the nobility of this man. He said, 
"One night early in his last illness I occupied a 



30 



small Dutch bed in his room to give Harrison, who 
usually attended him, a chance to have a good 
night's rest. General Grant could command to in- 
stant sleep, but then would groan and be restless 
so that I would have to get up to replace a woolen 
wrap about his throat. This would arouse him and 
as soon as the wrap was in place he fell asleep again 
at once. After several recurrences of like incidents 
my great dear father said, 'I see "Buck" you are 
not going to get any sleep so we will talk.' He said, 
'The doctors are much interested in my case and are 
making a study of it. No Grant is afraid to die and 
we can talk freely about cancer and all my symptoms. 
My only apprehension is that your mother is un- 
prepared for my death and it will shock her. That 
and the fact that I leave her so poorly off finan- 
cially.' " 

There — in this one incident is the man I have in 
this address endeavored to describe to you, — for- 
getful of self, absorbed in his anxiety for his loving 
and beloved wife's happiness, courageous, uncom- 
plaining and patient in his suffering, interested in 
the study of his case by the doctors and assisting 
them in that study in every way possible in the hope 
that something definite might result for the relief 
and cure of other like sufferers. He had already 
begun the writing of his Memoirs and although his 
suffering was intense and his physical strength 
weakening, he grimly hung on to life until the day 
after he finished his book which he began in order 
to pay his debts and provide a competency for his 
loyal life's-partner. In time General Grant lost the 
use of his voice and was obliged to communicate 



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with his family and others by pencil notes. Two or 
three times death seemed imminent and that he 
would not be spared to finish his book, but with that 
force of character to do the thing he starts out to do, 
he rallied and his great work was finished. 

In a letter written to his physician on July 2, 1885, 
with a request not to publish the same until later, he 
says, "I am thankful for the providential extension of 
my time to enable me to continue my work. I am fur- 
ther thankful, and in a much greater degree thankful, 
because it has enabled me to see for myself the happy 
harmony which has so suddenly sprung up between 
those engaged but a few short years ago in deadly 
conflict. It has been an inestimable blessing to me 
to hear the kind expression towards me in person 
from all parts of our country, from people of all 
nationalities, of all religions and of no religion, of 
Confederates and of National troops alike, of sol- 
diers' organizations, of mechanical, scientific, relig- 
ious and other societies, embracing almost every 
citizen in the land. They have brought joy to my 
heart, if they have not eft'ected a cure." On July 23, 
1885, at Mount McGregor, surrounded by his loving 
and devoted family, sank to rest Ulysses S. Grant. 



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PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY, AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



